The above video filmed by the Sunday Times in the St James Hotel’s restaurant is pretty damning for Baron Truscott. The former Labour DTI minister – once a special envoy for Tony Blair – is now a director of oil and mining companies controlled by Frank Timis, a twice convicted heroin dealer.

Truscott is a director of two Timis ventures. One, African Minerals, is active in Sierra Leone, the world’s biggest source of blood diamonds (African Minerals was formerly called the Sierra Leone Diamond Company). In September 2008 the Sunday Times reported that Timis was facing the prospect of a court case over disputed mineral rights. The other company, Eastern Petroleum is involved in oil prospecting in the former Soviet Union.

Truscott is also a director of Gulf Keystone Petroleum, a company involved in oil exploration in northern Iraq, run by Bush/Cheney campaign contributor Todd Kozel. In addition, Truscott works for Gavin Anderson, a PR firm with strong links to the government of Russia and its commercial associate. (See declared interests).

0947 Gordon Brown looked angry when it turned out some dope had forgotten to turn off his mobile phone during his G20 talk – until the red-faced British PM found out it was his handset ringing. And it went off twice.

UPDATE : The BBC has the clip of his Nokia ringing – you will wet yourself laughing. Still it is not as bad as the time he met Clinton and other world leaders with a big orange blob on his head is it? He really is just a walking global embarrassment.

During his visit Mr Brown also commented briefly on the current problems facing the car industry and Honda in Swindon. “We are working with all parties involved to improve the situation to help safeguard car production jobs and improve financing options for car buyers”

SwindonLife, January 9, 2009

Honda, Japan’s second-biggest carmaker, will tonight be mothballing its plant in Swindon, where the majority of its 4,200 British employees are based, in response to a slump in car sales. British workers at Honda will start an enforced four-month lay-off today against the backdrop of a further dire warning over the trading outlook from the Japanese car giant.

The Times, January 30, 2009

Velux Windows in Glenrothes was subjected to a visit from Jonah last October during the by-election campaign. Gordon congratulated them on their success. (ITN footage of soon to be sacked workers shaking Jonah’s hand.) Yesterday Keith Riddle, managing director of The Velux Company Limited, said: “Unfortunately we are making a number of redundancies and are currently in the consultation process with the people affected. It is expected that around half of the job losses will be made in Glenrothes, with the rest being spread around the UK and Ireland. Be warned, whether your business is large or small, if Jonah Brown comes, doom will follow…

UPDATE : Radioactive Jonah – “Because the future is nuclear, it is only right that Gordon should take a personal interest in the way our installations operate. And thus he went to Sellafield last week. So far, so good. There was, we now learn, a little local difficulty on the day the PM came to call: a radioactive leak that meant a walkway had to be cordoned off and a building closed. The whole thing is now the subject of a board of inquiry but it didn’t spoil his trip.”

Alan Duncan is the new Shadow Leader of the House, up against Harriet Harman. Those who complain that the Tories don’t attack hard enough (they don’t) will enjoy the exchange (Hansard) he had with her this morning.

There has been a sudden delay in the Political Parties and Elections Bill. Will the right hon. and learned Lady tell the House why that has happened? Given her close personal links with the aristocracy, is she not doubly ashamed by the apparent conduct of her four Labour colleagues in the Lords? May we also have a debate on cash for influence in this House? Does not the House of Lords pale into insignificance, given that, because more than 90% of the Labour party’s battleground funding comes from the trade unions, the party remains a wholly owned subsidiary of an interest group with its own policy agenda?…

The latest forecast from the International Monetary Fund suggests that, contrary to the Government’s mantra that the United Kingdom is well prepared to deal with the downturn, the UK is actually facing the worst recession in the world. Can we therefore at last have a debate in Government time to allow the House to express its lack of confidence in the Government’s handling of the economy, or is the Leader of the House worried that this is yet another issue that would leave the Prime Minister, as reported yesterday, “tearful and dewy-eyed”?

It would appear that the Prime Minister has lost confidence in his own Cabinet and, it would seem, even in himself. He has complained that his Cabinet members are ducking interviews and leaving him to look like the Minister for the recession, yet today, curiously, we have learned that Labour MPs have been instructed by the Whips not to talk about the economy at all. So who is going to win the parliamentary BAFTAs—the “Glumdog in Despair” in Downing street or the Basil Fawltys on the Back Benches shouting, “Don’t mention the recession”? Put simply, when is this country going to get honesty from the Prime Minister about the severity of our plight?

Newbie blogger Events dear boy, events, had a little nugget on Gordon’s day yesterday, which saw a PPS (Andy Slaughter) resign, the Heathrow vote too narrowly pass for comfort, the IFS report not kind to Gordon, the IMF report stating that the UK will be the worst performing economy in 2009 and rumours begin that Obama may not come to London* for the G20 hosted by the Saviour of the World.

That was all on top of his kicking at PMQs. Add to the list as well the interview Jon Cruddas MP gave to the Indy’s Andy Grice where he warns that Gordon is perhaps too emotionally retarded to beat Cameron. Not a great day in the bunker…

Guido has more bad news from yesterday to top it off. This came in from a co-conspirator who saw:

Charles Clarke and Stephen Byers finishing a quiet dinner together at the back of Colosseo on Victoria Street this evening. Whatever they were talking about was clearly so important that the socialist bastards didn’t even leave a tip. Clarke was clearly in charge, though, and Byers looked such a drab little creature.

Clarke and Byers eh? Now which Italian dish is it that is best served cold?

*According to a White House press release it is still Obama’s “hope to attend the G-20 Summit in London”.

Labour MPs claim a “tearful and dewy eyed” Prime Minister called the Labour waverers into his Commons office one by one and pleaded with them to back the Government. If we lose this vote it will de-stabilise the Government and de-stabilise the markets,” said the embattled Prime Minister, according to one MP who voted with the Tories despite the emotional appeal.

Given Gordon’s emotional instability (he is upset that cartoonists draw him as fat) it may well be that if Gordon resigned it would actually stabilise the government as well as give the markets a boost. Gordon’s mental health is being openly discussed, Iain Martin has a euphemistic piece in theTelegraphtoday recounting government ministers fears that the Prime Mentalist is “psychologically incapable”;

he is stuck… saying basically the same thing over and over and over again. I have said before that from the country’s point of view it risks becoming disturbing: now it really is.

It can only be that the PM has constructed something inside his head which he passionately believes to be the truth. If he was to admit even the tiniest doubt about one element of it then the entire construct might collapse.

Inside his head we know what he thinks, he is “the saviour of the world” doing the right thing, solving global ills not of his making and unbelievably yesterday Downing Street said Brown was right and the IMF was wrong. At PMQs yesterday Cameron demanded a reality check from Gordon to no avail. He would not admit that, even by his own definition, Britain was bust. If Gordon admitted he had not abolished “boom and bust” he would smash his internal “constructed truth” delusion. Blair was right, Brown is psychologically flawed. It is no longer a personal tragedy, it is at the root of the national political and economic disaster unfolding.

A rumour went round after Monday’s disastrous press briefing that Gordon had wet himself. Guido didn’t report the story because he was unable to substantiate it from the video evidence. That it was even rumoured and given any credence whatsoever shows that people in the Westminster Village think he is a man close to the edge of total breakdown. The humiliating truth is that Gordon Brown is not mentally fit for purpose.

Gordon keeps muttering about how the world needs an economic early warning system. Despite the existence of the IMF, OECD and countless private sector sources of threat warnings already. Do we need another international bureaucracy?

In 1996 the whole of luvviedom embraced Tony Blair, 1997 saw the whole Cool Britainnia thing sweep up celebrities into the embrace of New Labour. So it is interesting to see that Stephen Fry, the luvvie’s luvvie, is giving Tory

Lord Mandelson’s new found willingness to support the “British” car manufacturers is touching. When he tried to get an £80,000 Italian Maserati mid-life-crisis car as his official car out of the EU budget he was less supportive. He was in